Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Ace of Queens

I was unable to access the blog this morning, which made me feel panicky. Ah, addiction. But I digress...

I went to Queens last night. It was an accident—I was on my way to midtown Manhattan. I really have no excuse since I knew what train to get on and in which direction and yet, when I got off the 6 train to transfer to the R, I just followed the crowd and the letter R, like I was in some sort of extra-gritty episode of Sesame Street. We continued to the top of a flight of stairs, where the entire crowd stopped, looking down at the sea of people below. I could see it, this R train, and the doors were open. I pushed my way through the crowd, and the way I remember it is that I leaped over the stair railing, elbowed a couple of innocent bystanders, and made it onto the train just as the doors closed. I was, after all, on my way to meet people for drinks, so it was acceptable to be a Subway-riding badass.Immediately I realized that this train was going uptown instead of downtown. I mean, right away. And I had that sinking feeling that comes with doing something that was stupid and avoidable. But it didn’t seem like a big deal—after all, the train would stop at the next station and I would just turn around. Except…the train didn’t stop. I don’t know how long it actually took, but it seemed like forever that we were crawling through the tunnels. And then to make things even more fun, the train did stop for a while, but in the middle of the tunnel. I looked up at a sign that said “Litter on the tracks catches fire and causes delays.” I felt like attacking any person who dared to leave trash on the tracks, potentially causing this very delay.Lest you think I’m some sort of alcoholic who nearly had a meltdown on the R train because a drink was awaiting me, please know that I was mostly feeling the pain of leaving people who don’t really know each other waiting for me at some random bar. I was 30 minutes late from going ONE stop out of my way.Oh, I had my drink(s)--and then I went to a performance of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus (totally another story.) But the real crime is that I didn’t get to enjoy the glory that is Queens. Maybe someday I’ll go there on purpose.